WHat was Shakespeares approx working vocabulary

[tomisatschool]

(that is, the approx average amount of words he would use from play to play) and also (my main question) did that amount vary much from play to play to sonnet.I realize that coming up with a specific number of uniqe words for anyone play (and then comparing to other works) could be done (very monotonous job though) but I am hoping someone has done this sort of counting/calculating before. I noticed he invents a lot of words to make them fit into the meter, but does he use these same words in other plays?
If you don't think this has been done, then do you have any ideas how i could tabulate this (even if you think its rather pointless)? (use excel or something) .. i don't write software so I am sort of limited in what tools i could use, but I am thinking that excel would do the job, no? any ideas?

Also did shakespeare write anything else (that is still around) besides plays and sonnets?

thanks

 

[leroyjenkens]

Shakespeare had quite a few hapax legomena in his works. He used a lot of the same words from play to play, but you would sporadically encounter new words. Some of them he made up. If you look up some of the words in his plays, the dictionary will cite that specific play as the source of that word, as if that's the only place it appears.
I have a Shakespeare dictionary that basically has every word he used, and the meaning of it depends on what play it was used in.

I don't know if I was any help, I just wanted to use "hapax legomena" in a sentence.

 

[cobalt124]

My factoid contribution to this is that in all his works Shakespeare used about 25000 distinct words. off to Wikipedia to see what hapax legomena is.

 

[MarneMath]

Who could ever forget coming across the word honorifcabilitudinitatibus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorificabilitudinitatibus